Cornucopia: the UK database of museum collectionsPeter WinsorResource: The Council for Museums, Archives and Libraries

CD Focus - 14 May 2002

Introduction• Background• Building Cornucopia

– Pilot, Evaluation, Relaunch• Where we are now• Developments over the coming year

– Completing the data for museums– Interoperability– A cross-sectoral Cornucopia

• Vision• Contact details

Background• ‘…a means of celebrating the richness and

diversity of UK museum collections..’– Treasures in Trust, DCMS, 1998

• An online, fully-searchable database of UK museums and their collections

• Focus shifted from a management tool to a public information resource

• 2 levels of information:– Quick, accessible information– In-depth data in support of research/academia

Building Cornucopia - pilot• Pilot ‘concept’ website developed 1998• Data from 50 Designated museum collections• Information organised/searchable by:

– Geographical location– Associated people– Subject area

• Designated museums used because they had identifiable collections

• Simple text descriptions written specifically for each museum

Building Cornucopia - evaluation• Pilot website evaluated by Soloman Business

Research• Several approaches to evaluation:

– assisted sessions– school/teacher groups– online questionnaire

• Evaluation report produced• Key points used to develop project proposal• Full brief & specification drawn up

Building Cornucopia - relaunch• Consultant recruited to develop technical

specification• 2 consultants recruited to create text entries for

museums• Co-ordinator recruited at Resource to manage

project• Database constructed by System Simulation Ltd.• Website built by Co-ordinator• Website & database integrated & launched 2001

Where we are now• Fully-searchable online database• Index+ database & website hosted by Rutherford

Appleton Laboratories• Populated with basic information for 1200+

Registered museums in the UK• Data derived from DOMUS & Registration files• Includes detailed information from collections

mapping projects in the South West & West Midlands Area Museum Council regions

• Additional detailed descriptions for each museum

Data structure• Institutional information

– Address/contact details– Overview of collections/display/building

• Individual collections– Description– Access information/documentation– Significance of collections

• Strengths of individual collections– ‘Star objects’– Associated people

Terminology• Subject & object type terminologies

developed from SPECTRUM standard• 17 top-level terms• Geographical terminology from the Getty

Thesaurus of Geographic Names• Significance terms from West Midlands ‘First

Principles’ mapping report• Temporal coverage terms developed in

consultation with teachers/ school groups• Tried and tested approach• Documented on website

Browsing Cornucopia• 2 approaches to browsing:• full keyword search of all text in the database• advanced search by combinations of criteria:

– Geographical coverage– World Culture– Geographical location– Temporal coverage– Subject of collection

• Current work includes refining keywording in database to improve accuracy of search results

• Complete records for all remaining museums• Keywording for all records• Additional functionality - ‘My Cornucopia’,

pages for children, email details of a museum to a friend etc...

• Building on links with the 24 Hour Museum– already links dynamically to the relevant 24HM

record using the DOMUS no. as an identifier– displaying Cornucopia collections descriptions

as part of 24 HM records

Future development...

Future development...• Recruiting full-time co-ordinator to manage

development work• Building links with related collections description

projects, incl:– Agricultural collections– Natural History collections– Music collections

• Exporting Dublin Core metadata from the database

• Interoperable data shared through XML or Z39.50 protocol

Future development...• A cross-sectoral Cornucopia…?• Several issues to be resolved:

– a cross-sectoral definition of ‘collection’– a terminological standard for collection types– how to present the information in a meaningful way

• Already have a stable & scalable data structure• Learning the lessons for current cross-sectoral

projects eg. Crossroads (West Midlands) and Cecelia (music collections in museums, archives and libraries)

Vision for Cornucopia• Completed records for all UK museums, libraries

& archives• Fully searchable online database• ‘Trails’ through collections by subject type,

temporal coverage, world event etc• Dynamic information resource providing

descriptions to other databases• Sustainable, up-to-date information verified by

institutions• Promoting public access to UK cultural collections

Contact

Peter Winsor

Resource: The Council for Museums, Archives & Libraries

16 Queen Anne’s Gate

London SW1H 9AA

Telephone: 020 7273 1410

Full documentation of the development of Cornucopia, including data structure, terminology and ongoing work are available from the Cornucopia website at:

http://www.cornucopia.org.uk